GoHealth: Easier Than Booking a Flight to Vegas

You can comparison shop flights, hotels, and shoes, so why not health insurance? This week the Supreme Court will likely announce their ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (aka. Obamacare). GoHealth, which just received a $50 million equity investment from Norwest Equity Partners, is betting on a favorable ruling, meaning that it hopes millions of Americans will soon be looking for health insurance, and of course, the best deal.

1) Panels: Three easy steps are laid out on the homepage – enter information, compare quotes, and look at individual plan details. The application process is left out of these three steps and should be put in as step #4: Select and Apply for Health Insurance. It is after all, why we are here.

2) Get Quotes: This is slightly misleading, as I actually need to give them my gender, DOB, smoking preference, zip, and coverage start date before I can get a quote. This button should read “START” or “GO” and on the next slide (image below), the “GO” button should be renamed “GET QUOTE.”3) Stats: Helpful to put that 2 million customers have successfully used the site – certainly takes away some of my anxiety!

1) Chat: The site does a good job of making you feel taken care of. You can chat with a specialist at any time.

2) Get Quote: You filled in your information so “Get Quote” makes more sense than “Go.”3) Reminder: Great reminder, saves me time as well knowing that I will get the same deal anywhere.

1) Preferences: As you know by now, I love easy to use preference/relevance sidebars and options!

2) Definitions: This is very helpful in reminding users what deductibles and copays are and how they affect your plan. Puts customers at ease physiologically as well, knowing that the 2 million other users probably also didn’t know what a deductible was when they first used the site.3) Details: Details are very helpful and you can get brochures on additional information.4) Compare: After selecting a few plans (up to four), I can view them side-by-side, sort of like comparing stats on different models of laptops. Also as soon as I selected the option to compare, a chat message appeared from a sales agent, asking me if I had any questions or concerns in making my selection. This is a great point of entry for a sales agent since presumably I am close to narrowing down a choice and need a gentle nudge in the right direction.

1) Competitive Confusion: If you go to ehealthinsurance.com you see a similar page as GoHealth, with the same purpose of selling health insurance. It looks like GoHealth uses the eHealthInsurance backend application platform and the logo placement must be part of the contract. It is a little unfortunate as I immediately went to the other site and found their page just as welcoming and not very differentiated.

2) Make it Easy: Always draw out the path to success for the client. Each step filled makes it harder for them to turn back.

The concept of this site is straightforward and easy to use, with search options and comparison views that are reminiscent of popular consumer websites such as AutoTrader.com. It will be interesting to see how things shake out with the Supreme Court this week, and it could mean a big pay day for GoHealth. Stay tuned.